


Resonance

by prairiecrow



Series: Lethe's Curse [6]
Category: ReBoot (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Memory Alteration, Music, Musicians, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 21:11:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haskell knows a beautiful duet when he hears it, even if he's not the one singing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resonance

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Takes place on the world of Lethe, where Bob and Megabyte awoke stripped of their memories, formed an alliance of convenience — and found themselves, one day, profoundly physically changed. 2) Takes place between a couple of weeks before "Possession" 3) A picture of Megabyte and Bob at this point in the chronology: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v189/crowdog66/lethebobmegabyte-1.jpg

Haskell knows a thing or two about music. He's been playing it all his life since coming to Lethe with his sister Hask, and he's learned (or perhaps remembered) all about the qualities of tambour and panpipe, fiddle and flute, and the drums that can shake loose the bones and the passions of a revelling crowd. He doesn't say much, but he listens to everything — and he hears more than most people give him credit for, even Hask, who, although she's his closest friend in this world, has a tendency to be flighty and to perceive only the surface of what she sees.

He watches too, and notices much. But primarily he listens to the music that the people of the Court make with their clothes and their expressions and their ways of sitting and standing and walking — and especially he listens to their voices, and their inner worlds open to him with every word they speak.

Even if they're not speaking directly to him.

Haskell may not remember any concrete details of the world they hail from, he and his sister and the Guardian and the virus, but he knows this: that what Bob is and what Megabyte is are meant to exist in opposition. When they raise their voices together it should be violent and bitter and cacophonous, the sound of two conductors striving to defeat each other in a war of operatic scores. Bob's leitmotif of quick restless strings and clear defiant horns should always challenge Megabyte's theme of thundering percussion and menacing brasses, and the conflict should be clear to anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see.

And they argue, certainly — in fact, they seem to enjoy disagreeing with each other as inventively as they can. Their voices circle and fence, strike and feint and interweave, marking point and counterpoint in a never-ending duet. They act like two widely separated strings on a single instrument… no, like two instruments of completely different pitches and timbres, of dissimilar forms and functions and vastly disparate cultures, blending their voices in one complex melody, each of them playing to their strengths around a canon they are creating for themselves, and to hell with everyone else. 

It shouldn't be possible. But Haskell is a man of few illusions, and he isn't going to deny the existence of the impossible when it's right there before his eyes and his ears. He can even hear Megabyte's music when Bob is alone with him and Hask, the Guardian's personal melody infected by the shadow of a darker progression even as he lies in the arms of his friends, his heart singing _ardore_ to one who is not there to hear.

Haskell knows a thing or two about that as well. And although he wishes that Bob would be still long enough to hear the song of his own spirit, quiet and deep and full of longing as clear and as vast as the sky, in his heart he is resigned to being forever unheard. Bob has a part to play in a far greater drama, of that Haskell is certain, and he's also fully aware that when the finale is sung it will be Megabyte's baritone that is married with Bob's triumphant tenor, not the harsher voice of an instrumentalist who is wise enough to know his limitations and to offer, out of unrequited love, the gift of silence.

THE END


End file.
